Call for Action on Behalf of Rizana
Nafeek, Given on AHRC Website Link Above.

DETAILED
INFORMATION:

The death sentence has been confirmed in the case of Rizana Nafeek. She was
charged with strangling the 4-month-old child of the family for whom she worked
as a housemaid. She was legally allowed only 30 days from the date of the court
order to make her appeal. An appeal was made on her behalf by the intervention
of human rights groups who paid for the lawyers and her death sentence was set
aside pending appeal.

Rizana Nafeek was born on February 4, 1988 and comes from a war-torn,
impoverished village. Here, many families, including those of the Muslim
community try to send their under aged children for employment outside the
country, as their breadwinners. Some employment agencies exploit the situation
of the impoverished families to recruit under aged girls for employment. For
that purpose they engage in obtaining passports by altering the dates of birth
of these children to make it appear that they are older than they really are.
In the case of Rizana Nafeek, the altered date, which is to be found in her
passport now, is February 2, 1982. It was on the basis of this altered date
that the employment agency fixed her employment in Saudi Arabia and she went
there in May 2005.

She went to work at the house of Mr. Naif Jiziyan Khalaf Al Otaibi whose
wife had a new-born baby boy. A short time after she started working for this
family she was assigned to bottle feed the infant who was by then four months
old. Rizana Nafeek had no experience of any sort in caring for such a young
infant. She was left alone when bottle feeding the child. While she was feeding
the child the boy started choking, as so often happens to babies and Rizana
Nafeek panicked and while shouting for help tried to sooth the child by feeling
the chest, neck and face, doing whatever she could to help him. At her shouting
the mother arrived but by that time the baby was either unconscious or dead.
Unfortunately, misunderstanding the situation the family members treated the
teenager very harshly and handed her over to the police, accusing her of
strangling the baby. At the police station also, she was very harshly handled
and did not have the help of a translator or anyone else to whom she could
explain what had happened. She was made to sign a confession and later charges
were filed in court of murder by strangulation.

On her first appearance in court she was sternly warned by the police to
repeat her confession, which she did. However, later she was able to talk to an
interpreter who was sent by the Sri Lankan embassy and she explained in her own
language the circumstances of what had happened as stated above. This version
was also stated in court thereafter.

According to reports, the judges who heard the case requested the father of
the child to use his prerogative to pardon the young girl. However, the father
refused to grant such pardon. On that basis the court sentenced her to death by
beheading. This sentence was made on June 16, 2007.

The said murder allegedly took place in February 2005 when Rizana Nafeek was
only 17 years old. Sources said she had modified her age on her passport so
that she could enter Saudi Arabia to work. Accordingly, she was still
considered a minor by the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Child.

The case of Rizana Nafeek, the underaged Sri Lankan housemaid who was found
guilty of the death of a Saudi infant in May 2005, has taken a new turn. The
court in Dawadmi where Nafeek was initially tried has referred the case once
again to the Supreme Judicial Council in Riyadh.

The referral is accompanied by a new statement from the police who took
Nafeek’s alleged confession, embassy officials said on Wednesday. No details
about the new statement were available.

The case has been bouncing between courts over the past year. It first
arrived in the high court in Riyadh in March 2008.

In November the high court announced that a key witness to what happened on
the day Nafeek allegedly made her confession, the Lankan translator, had left
the Kingdom and would be unavailable for testimony. Nafeek is appealing a death
sentence. The parents of the infant accused her of murdering the child; she
claims the infant choked while being bottle-fed.

Nafeek was trafficked into the country to work as a housemaid on a passport
that falsely stated her age as 23. Her original birth certificate indicates she
was 17 at the time, which would have barred her from work in the Kingdom.

The act not only violated the Kingdom’s own laws against utilizing under-age
labor, but it also constitutes human trafficking on the part of the recruiter
who sent her to the Kingdom.

A court advocate for the accused from the Sri Lanka Embassy expressed
concern that Nafeek had been in prison for five years while the system sought
to dispense justice. “We visit her often and will console her until a
final verdict is given,” said the official who did not want to be named.

Nafeek was spared execution last year on the last day of the deadline for
appeal when she was assigned a lawyer, retained with the help of the Asian
Human Rights Commission and the Lankan community in Saudi Arabia. Khateb
Al-Shammary, the lawyer, cited several reasons why the maid should not be
executed.

In addition to the issue of Nafeek’s age, the legal representative says she
was assigned the duties of a nanny and assigned the care of a newborn in
addition to her duties as a housekeeper.

The lawyer also says that since Nafeek had only been on the job for seven
days, there was not enough time for her to harbor ill will that would cause
her, as the parents of the dead baby allege, to murder of the newborn out of
anger and vengeance.

Nafeek maintains that her confession is invalid because it was produced
under duress and with inadequate translation. Nafeek arrived on May 4, 2005,
three months after her 17th birthday, to work for Naif Jiziyan Khalaf Al-Otaibi
and his family in Dawadmi, 390km west of Riyadh.

The incident in which the infant died occurred around 12:30 p.m. on May 22,
2005, while Nafeek was bottle-feeding the child. On the same day, she was in
the police station, allegedly confessing that she had murdered the child.

Kifaya Ifthikar, a social worker who visited Nafeek last week told Arab News
that Nafeek spent her time embroidering pillow covers. Nafeek’s family has
requested the Sri Lankan government to assign a negotiator to encourage the
Al-Otaibi family to forgive Nafeek during Ramadan.

# # #

About AHRC: The Asian Human Rights Commission is a regional
non-governmental organisation monitoring and lobbying human rights issues in
Asia. The Hong Kong-based group was founded in 1984.

COMPLEX CASE OF YOUNG GIRL SRI
LANKAN MIGRANT, RIZANA NAFEEK, MAID IN SAUDI ARABIA, ACCUSED OF DEATH OF
INFANT, SENTENCED TO DEATH BY BEHEADING, GLOBAL CAMPAIGN TO SAVE HER LIFE.

WUNRN posts this case status and
history to illustrate the vunerability of migrant workers, especially young,
especially FEMALE, assuredly poor, and the complexities of legal and court
issues in another country and with religious and/or civil law. In the case of
Rizana Nafeek, global intervention, very much through NGOs' leadership, brought
the case to public attention and political/diplomatic/legal intervention.

To the recipients of communications through the AHRC network, Rizana
Nafeek is a familiar name. The 17-year-old girl from a poor family from a
conflict ridden area with a passport indicating her age as 18 arrived in Saudi
Arabia as a domestic helper. Within two weeks this young girl was accused of
the murder of an infant which she denied, claiming that the death was the
result of accidental choking. However, by the time the news reached the outside
world she had already been sentenced to death by beheading by a Saudi court
and she had only 20 days remaining to make an appeal.

The BBC Sinhala Service broadcast this news and expressed the fear that,
like four Sri Lankans who had been beheaded earlier, she might face a similar
fate.

At this stage the Asian Human Rights Commission wrote twice to the Sri
Lankan Foreign Ministry urging intervention to provide legal assistance to the
girl. However, it was then learned that it is not the policy of the Sri Lankan
Foreign Ministry to provide financial assistance for legal fees. On this basis
the Asian Human Rights Commission launched an appeal for raising SR 150,000
which amounted to around US$ 40,000 as legal fees for a very competent legal
firm, Al Shammary. With the quick responses received from local as well as
outside sources the appeal was launched in the nick of time and the death
sentence was suspended until the final hearing of the appeal.

Due to the untiring efforts of Al Shammary the case was taken up and the
Supreme Council which sent the case back to the original court of Dawadami.
During these proceedings it was discovered that the person who authenticated
Rizana’s alleged confession was not a qualified translator and may not even
have known the Tamil language properly. As the case proceeded with the
likelihood that the court may quash the earlier sentence, the happy news has
reached us that the parents of the deceased baby may take steps to forgive
Rizana, which according to Saudi law brings the matter to an end.

Mohammad Rasooldeen who has reported this case regularly has published the
following article on October 5.

Nafeek case: Father willing to forgiveMd Rasooldeen | Arab News

RIYADH: The Kingdom's Human Rights Commission will attempt to persuade
the mother of an infant who died in the care of a Sri Lankan woman hired as a house
cleaner but given nanny duties to cease pursuit of the death penalty.

The father, according to the mediators, has expressed his desire to
forgive the maid.

HRC President Turki Al-Sudairy conveyed the latest information in this
much-publicized case to Sri Lankan Ambassador Abdul Ageed Mohammed Marleen at a
recent meeting at the HRC headquarters in Riyadh.

Al-Sudairy said that HRC officials met the father, Naif Jiziyan Khalaf
Al-Otaibi, and he expressed w illingness to pardon 20-year-old Rizana Nafeek.
However, the mother still claims her private right in the case and is not ready
to forgive the maid.

Al-Sudairy told Marleen that the HRC will meet the father and mother
together and persuade them to pardon the maid at the next hearing on Nov. 5
before a judicial tribunal headed by Chief Justice Sheikh Abdullah Al-Rosaimi.

The local court in Dawadmi found Nafeek guilty in June 2007. Since then
her appeals process has bounced a number of times between the local court and
the Supreme Judicial Council via the Cassation Court. Her case is still in this
appeals process after the Hong Kong-based Asian Human Rights Commission
retained legal representation for Nafeek, with the help of contributions from
the Lankan community in Saudi Arabia.

Prior to the first verdict that sentenced her to death, Nafeek did not
have any legal representation.

Nafeek allegedly signed a confession, but her lawyers argue that the
confession was made under duress and, more importantly, Nafeek had no access to
a translator during the initial questioning after she was arrested in 2005.
Confessions are typically written in Arabic and signed by fingerprint.

It later came to light that Nafeek was recruited illegally as a minor
and trafficked to Saudi Arabia on a forged passport.

Her birth certificate says she was 17 at the time she began working for
the Saudi family, but her passport states she was not a minor at the time.

It is illegal to bring in foreign workers to Saudi Arabia under the age
of 18. An unscrupulous recruitment agent in Colombo may have committed the
forgery, thus violating Sri Lankan law and engaging in the trafficking of
minors and racketeering. Nobody has been named a suspect in this crime.

Putting to death a person who committed a crime under the age of 18
would violate Article 37 of the UN Convention of the Rights of the Child that
Saudi Arabia voluntarily si gned in February 1996.

Marleen said he told Al-Sudairy that whenever there are trials involving
Sri Lankan nationals, it is absolutely necessary for Sri Lankan Embassy
officials to know the progress of the case in order to avoid
"misrepresentations and misgivings."

Embassy officials should be allowed as observers at the hearings, he
added, pointing out that an official representative of the Sri Lankan
government was not allowed to be present at Nafeek's hearing at the Dawadmi
court.

"An effective mechanism must be in place to ensure that the arrests
of Sri Lankan nationals are reported to the embassy on a priority basis so that
we can provide consular assistance to the detained (suspect)," Marleen
told Arab News.

Meanwhile, in a letter addressed to her parents, Nafeek said that this
would be her last Eid in the Kingdom since she would either be released and
sent home or executed before Eid 2009.

Campaign for Rizana Nafeek

The campaign launched for Rizana Nafeek found overwhelming local and
international report is summed up in an article published in Ethics in Action:

Campaigning for the right to life:
The case of 17-year-old Rizana Nafeek

Asian Human Rights Commission

On 16 June 2007, 17-year-old Rizana Nafeek, a Sri Lankan migrant worker, was
sentenced to death by a Saudi Arabian high court, for the death of a
four-month-old infant in her care. The baby died from choking while being
bottle fed by Rizana on 22 May 2005. Rizana was arrested by the Saudi police on
the same day and allegedly confessed to the crime; however, in February 2007
she retracted this confession, saying the police obtained it under duress.
Moreover, at no time was Rizana given translators or legal assistance. In
subsequent hearings the three-judge panel noted that if the dead baby’s family
were to pardon Rizana, the case would be closed and Rizana would be free. The
family refused, leading to Rizana’s sentencing in June. Under Saudi law, Rizana
could file an appeal against the death sentence within one month; by 16 July
2007.

Surprisingly, this case was barely reported in the Sri Lankan or
international press. For this reason, when it initially came to the attention
of the Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC), it came as a sketchy tale.
However, the AHRC took up the case purely on the basis of a 17-year-old being
sentenced to death, and issued its first urgent appeal. Only later were more
details uncovered, through communication with a number of different persons,
including the Sri Lankan ambassador to Saudi Arabia.

Eventually it was realized that the crux of the case came down to filing an
appeal against the death sentence; if Rizana was to be saved, the next legal
step had to be taken. Amongst all the letter writing to the Saudi Arabian
government as well as the family of the dead child, it was necessary that
concrete steps be taken within the system; filing an appeal. The deadline was
looming, and Rizana was unable to lodge an appeal without financial and legal
assistance. The AHRC had written to the Sri Lankan government to assist Rizana
in making an appeal, which the government claimed it could not do, as it had
‘no policy’ regarding such matters. When this was made public, several groups
contacted the AHRC and expressed an interest in partially covering the legal
cost. The AHRC immediately wrote to the Sri Lankan government asking them
to engage lawyers, whose fees would be paid through the AHRC. The AHRC then
requested persons to donate. Within a short time the fees were collected and
legal representation was attained for Rizana, ensuring that she was able to
make the deadline of July 16 for the appeal.

This interest indicated that when people are asked specifically to do
things, they are more likely to take an interest in cases. It is therefore
useful for human rights groups to move beyond certain self imposed boundaries
when attempting to garner support for cases.

It was also important to note that throughout the two weeks in which these
events occurred, there was a lot of media support. From the BBC to the
International Herald Tribune, from Al Jazeera to local Sri Lankan media,
correspondents called up the AHRC and asked for information on Rizana. Other
individuals and groups wrote to the AHRC expressing their support. Within a
short time, there were 30 000 signatures to an online petition requesting
pardon for Rizana. A local petition was later handed over to the Saudi Arabian
embassy in Colombo, Sri Lanka with 100 000 signatures. While there was a lot of
attention specifically on Rizana, there was just as much attention on the
issues of migrant workers and the use of the death penalty. Discussion focused
around the Convention on the Protection of All Migrant Workers and Members of
their Families, the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations and its Optional
Protocol, and previous beheadings of Sri Lankan citizens in Saudi Arabia.

This interest and discussion is ongoing, and the AHRC continues to receive
expressions of support towards Rizana.

In the course of Rizana bottle feeding a four-month-old infant, the infant
choked to death even as the teenage girl desperately tried to help by way of
soothing and stroking the baby’s chest, face and neck. Due to
misunderstandings, the case was presented as the murder of a baby by strangulation.
Subsequently, the judges hearing the case requested the baby’s father, Mr Naif
Jiziyan Khklafal Otaibi, to use his prerogative to pardon Rizana, but he
refused. On this basis, Rizana was sentenced to death by a Saudi Arabian court
on 16 June 2007.

After careful consideration of all the facts, the AHRC is of the view that
the baby’s death was a terrible tragedy, but current events are leading to a
further tragedy: the execution of an innocent, inexperienced teenager.

Scholarly considerations can help to make the necessary reflections
distinguishing a tragedy from a crime, and from such reflections interventions
can be made to prevent a further tragedy. We encourage Muslim scholars to
communicate with this unfortunate family and provide them with the necessary
counsel and support so they may deal wisely with the case.

While the AHRC is experienced in common and civil law jurisdictions, the
same cannot be said of the Islamic legal system. To deepen our knowledge and
understanding regarding the operation of Islamic laws in Rizana’s case as well
as overall, we request Muslim scholars to consider the following issues:

a. How would complaints of causing duress to obtain a confession be examined
in a Saudi Arabian court? Under both common and civil law procedures, such a
complaint would be separately examined, and if the court was satisfied that the
complaint is true, no importance is attached to the confession. The court will
then decide the case on the basis of whatever other evidence is available.

b. How would a Saudi Arabian court treat new information which could have a
significant influence on understanding the issues relating to the case? For
instance, if it is revealed that the actual age of the accused is 17, and not
24 as originally claimed, would the court re-consider its verdict, taking into
account any implications arising from this new information?

c. How would mens rea, or the mental element in crime be examined in a Saudi
Arabian court? According to both common and civil law systems, the intention to
cause the crime is an essential ingredient of the crime itself, and
sophisticated jurisprudence regarding this exists. What is the counterpart in
Islamic law?

d. What is the manner in which guilt is determined and the proportionality
of the punishment measured under Islamic law? Again, common and civil law
jurisdictions have seen centuries of debate on these matters and certain basic
principles have become the norm in all courts.

e. What importance would a Saudi Arabian appeals court attach to the absence
of legal representation during trial? It is now customary in common and civil
law systems to consider the issue of legal representation as an essential
element of a fair trial, particularly in cases carrying serious sentences such
as the death penalty. An appeal court in either system may set aside the
decision of a trial court if the accused was not provided legal representation.
In fact, courts are also taking the stance that if legal representation was
provided but it was inadequate - for instance the lawyer was patently
incompetent - there is a strong ground for appeal. How are such matters
considered within the Saudi Arabian legal system?

f. How does a Saudi Arabian trial or appeal court consider the issue of
persons who are aliens to the country, who are unfamiliar with the culture,
laws and legal practices of the country of residence? In common and civil law
jurisdictions it is now a recognized duty to provide services which enable such
persons to participate in the trial process with full comprehension and
dignity. Any failures in this regard would be considered as flaws in the trial,
giving rise to reasonable grounds for appeal.

The AHRC invites scholars and practitioners to express their views on these
matters by writing to ahrc@ahrc.asia. Those
wishing to offer their advice to the family of the deceased child may do so
through the following address c/o the Sri Lankan Embassy in Riyadh, Saudi
Arabia:

Document - Saudi
Arabia: Death Sentence: Rizana Nafeek

PUBLIC
AI Index: MDE 23/026/2007 05 July 2007

UA 175/07 Death sentence

SAUDI ARABIA Rizana Nafeek (f), aged 19, Sri Lankan national

Domestic worker Rizana Nafeek was sentenced to death on 16 June for a murder
committed while she was 17 years old. Saudi Arabia is a state party to the
Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), which expressly prohibits the
execution of offenders for crimes committed when they were under 18 years old.
Rizana Nafeek is believed to have appealed against her sentence, but if her
appeal is unsuccessful she could be executed within days.

She was arrested in May 2005 in Jeddah on charges of murdering an infant in her
care. She had no access to lawyers either during interrogation or at her trial
and was believed to have confessed to the murder during police questioning. She
has since retracted her confession.

She apparently told the authorities that she was born in February 1988, but
they seem to have ignored this on the basis that her passport indicated that
she was born in February 1982. According to information available to Amnesty
International no medical examination is believed to have been carried out to
ascertain her age, nor was she given the opportunity to present her birth
certificate, which reportedly shows that she was born in 1988.

BACKGROUND INFORMATION

Saudi Arabia applies the death penalty for a wide range of offences. Court
proceedings fall far short of international standards for fair trial, and take
place behind closed doors.

Defendants normally do not have formal representation by a lawyer, and in many
cases are not informed of the progress of legal proceedings against them. They
may be convicted solely on the basis of confessions obtained under duress,
torture or deception. The rate of executions in Saudi Arabia has recently
increased sharply, and the authorities have executed at least 100 people so far
this year, although the true figure may be much higher. Death sentences are
usually carried out by beheading.

Saudi Arabia assured the Committee on the Rights of the Child (who monitor
states' implementation of the CRC) in January 2006 that no children had been
executed in the country since the CRC came into force in Saudi Arabia in 1997.
This is a weaker commitment than is required by the CRC, which demands that no
one is executed for crimes committed when they were under 18, no matter how old
they are now.

RECOMMENDED ACTION: Please send appeals to arrive as quickly as possible,
in Arabic, English or your own language:
- urging the King to intervene and commute Rizana Nafeek’s death sentence;
- pointing out that the execution of juvenile offenders is expressly prohibited
by the Convention on the Rights of the Child, which Saudi Arabia ratified in 1997;
- calling on the Saudi Arabian authorities to ensure that Rizana Nafeek has
access to a lawyer of her choice to present her appeal and is given an
effective opportunity to exercise her right to defence and appeal against her
death sentence in a transparent process;
- acknowledging the right of the government to bring to justice those
responsible for criminal offences, but expressing unconditional opposition to
the death penalty;
- reminding the authorities that they are bound by international standards for
fair trial in capital cases